Andrew Weeraratne Reflections

Ability to think freely and having the candor and courage to express those views and then change your mind when/if others prove you wrong by giving you facts is the zenith of civilized mind. To live any other way is to be a mental slave.

Mar 19, 2010

Would you agree that we cannot have a democracy or free market and capitalism without free media? Freedom to speak not necessarily has to be taken away through legal censorship but could be taken away through depravation of access to media. For example, if all the audience could hear are Masters of Propaganda promoting a strategy of welfare for the rich and nothing except the notion of “hope” for the working people then enough people could be brainwashed to agree on such a cockamamie theory destructing themselves, the same way some immature children carry on suicide bombing listening to leaders who advocate religious violence and a place in heaven.

Masters of Propaganda will get at you first by applying to your most basic fears and agreeing with your most basic prejudices making you to agree with them before they take away your power to think freely. Then before you know, the propagandist have turned you into a Zombie accomplice to murder of 120 fellow citizens per day depriving them of healthcare (a phenomenon happens only in the USA among rich countries). This is the power of media in a society gradually losing its freedom to think.
If a person could look right at you and make a baseless statement (B.S.) and get you to agree with him once, then they will keep on increasing the frequency in which you will agree with all other B.S. that they will barge on you. Once you agree to enough of their B.S. they got you hooked, like a drug addict hooked on to drugs. This is how people have been brainwashed throughout history. The perpetrator normally doesn’t disagree with you upfront but agrees enough times to convince that they are in the same team with you. Watch a master propagandist in action: He will cry like a baby one time and the next time smile impressively with you gaining your affirmation applying to your basic insecurities, before the poison is put on you to self-destruct. Your eventual destruction is their monetary gain. The best slave is who has no more power to think for himself.

The logic of the propagandist goes as follows: any government doing anything for the common man is socialism. But it is ok for every power group in the nation to have a lobbyist influencing congress to pass legislation providing them welfare as long as these power groups advertise with the media enabling the hundred-million-dollar man’s compensation. It is only a sucker (born every minute) would take anything such a journalist says seriously. Think of this next time you see the propagandist.
In his classic fiction “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” George Orwell defines freedom as the right to say that two and two add up to be four. For example, the government trying to give affordable healthcare, even if hurts the profits of drug companies and their middlemen the insurance companies, is not socialism regardless how the masters of propaganda (who are paid by the industry) twist it; understanding this has to be as simple as adding two and two together.

The situation in the USA today also reminds me of an old classic movie, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” That movie is about a town where the townspeople are in fact being replaced by perfect physical duplicates, simulations grown from plantlike pods. The “pod people” are indistinguishable from normal people, except for their utter lack of emotion. The Pod People work together to secretly spread more pods — which grew from "seeds drifting through space for years" — in order to replace the entire human race. The day you see a huge segment of the population not being able to distinguish between right and wrong is the day society has been taken over by “pod people.”

One way to do your duty to protect democracy and capitalism is to speak out and let those who control our media know that we are not that easily brainwashed, thus warning them not even to think of trying any such trick on us with 24/7 propaganda. If the Russian people had a way to tell their king that they were ready to throw them out before the revolution and if the king had listened to the true grievances of his people and done something to alleviate them before it was too late, rather than getting involved in foreign wars, then there would have been no Russian Revolution and the eventual takeover of the country by even worse murderous dictators.

Would you say anything if someone pays you $100 million per year to say it? People kill people for much less. For hundred million dollars, some people may say things to trigger bombing a whole nation slaughtering millions of people if that process will transfer billions in profits to a few companies in the defense industry. Thus if not kept in check we may be soon heading there or some of you may say that we have already been there. Either way it is our duty to stop killing innocent people.

No one pays a newsman $100 million to tell the truth but pays it to market something or to carry on propaganda in such a sleek manner that the innocent and naive listener, will believe, if not every word but most of what they hear. Be aware that who you see/hear in your favorite political show is an amazingly well-paid, super salesman (the lead man) who has the looks, the intelligence, the charisma and the skills to sell you what they are paid to sell. Also be aware that the rest of the members of the U.S. Media would like to make $100 million also. Thus we have a media echo chamber where the other journalists also repeat anything the lead 100 million-dollar man says, hoping that if they say somewhat similar to the things the lead man says they also will be paid somewhat close to the lead man by those super wealthy who pay the lead man. It is your duty as an intelligent listener (buyer) to beware. Otherwise you are no different than any other religiously or socially brainwashed poor soul.

This is briefly what is happening with the US media today. We are fast losing the free media that tells the people the truth and is interested in discussing facts as to how their government could do things for the common good of its people. Instead we have a media that is being taken over by extremely wealthy individuals using their corporate structure. The media makes a good chunk of its money through advertising revenue. Such advertising revenue comes to them only through a handful of businesses (that are also mostly corporations big enough to spend billions in advertising) that control the US and international markets. There is nothing wrong in being large successful businesses in the global market but what is wrong is the way these business interests have taken over the government. The U.S. Government is no longer the government of the people, by the people for the people, but has become an entity of, by and for the lobbyists. The purpose of these lobbyists is to pass legislation so that the US government uses its trillion-dollar-treasury to give this handful of businesses welfare in all sorts of sophisticated ways

In a way we cannot blame these journalists for the pathetic situation our media is in today. After all they know that if they don’t peddle propaganda someone else would do it. It is like being a policeman in a nation controlled by drug dealers. The boss drug dealer may tell the policeman to take a bribe, live a comfortable life and support them or face the consequences of his loved one being brutally murdered as an example for the rest. When faced with a situation like that the option that any smart person would take is quite clear. Similarly a man or woman in the USA who wants to be a journalist is given a clear choice: Take a good salary and peddle propaganda handed over to them or face the consequences of living in a society with no healthcare, no retirement and a job that would not pay enough to live without borrowing. The choice for the journalist in a society run by lobbyists is as clear as to the choice for the policeman in a society run by drug dealers.

Once you see the journalism in the USA in that context you will see why the majority in the media oppose any legislation that may give anything, even if it the most basic right, for the common man and woman. It is just not enough that they want the Government to give away the wealth of the nation to the very wealthy but they also want the government to give no breaks to the common man and woman. The corporations do not want any competition from anyone, including from the government, but want the people to buy everything they need, especially the essential services they need to survive, from the monopolies that the very wealthy have set up, at whatever the price they want to sell them. As you can imagine that is not how the free market system should work. In a capitalist economy there should be enough competition for goods and services so that the prices will be determined by market forces and not by monopolies.